Music Makers

music moots with Mud Whale ("over" by Noise Beneath the Floor)

We are extremely back with Music Moots™, the blogseries where I ask people I know either from the internet or real life to recommend me a song they like, and then I listen to the song and then write a little about it.

So far I've been doing Music Moots with people I know....now I'm trying it with people I don't know but want to get to know through their excellent music recs. The idea being that everyone on planet earth is a moot you have yet to meet. You know what I mean? Wow my coffee is really hitting today. I switched from dark roast to medium roast and I guess I'm vibrating well at the medium roast frequency.

Today we've got Mud Whale, a Cleveland band whose new album Humans Pretending To Be Human is adorned with the genre tag "Emo Grunge." My first impression of the album was something along the lines of, wow, these are complex songs with a lot of moving parts but it all sounds so damn smooth...it's like looking at the inside of an old clock, only with headbanging riffs and lots of screaming.

Everyone in the band—Avery Sylvaine on drums, Joe Hanson on bass, Justin Cheuvront on guitar, and Michael Morris on guitar and vox, and I placed them in that order because that's the order they are listed on their Bandcamp, which I think is cool and refreshing—brings 200% power and clarity to these dense and lively songs. I give a special shout out to Morris, who shreds vocals like Post Cereal shreds wheat.

So what did Mud Whale recommend I listen to? They say that Humans Pretending To Be Human is FFO "loving your friends" (as well as Touché Amoré, Balance & Composure, Title Fight, etc.). In that spirit, Morris recommended a song by a fellow Ohio group: "over" by Columbus band Noise Beneath the Floor....

"Noise Beneath the Floor, a dreamy indie rock band, is some of our best friends who we found when we both released albums on the same day in 2021. After years of talking and a going on a small run together, we’ve decided to release our albums simultaneously again. This time on purpose. They’re amazing people, phenomenal musicians, and we’re honored for our music to be tied together on such a special day."

Wow! And "over" is awesome: bright, sweet, driving rock with pristine high-low vocal harmonies. Even though the lyrics speak of dread and potential regret, "over" has a sneaky positive aspect to it—it sounds like a gasoline puddle rainbow, or the precise second your afternoon caffeinated beverage hits, or the opportunity to take a free miniature candy bar from a bowl while running errands, or the first sunny morning after a stretch of gray days.

Noise Beneath The Floor bill themselves as an "atmospheric" rock band and that definitely tracks here—the stack of guitars creates a vapor that the vocals get to shine through. And oooo, this morning in Meaghan Garvey's newsletter about the 25th anniversary of the documentary American Movie, she linked a tweet from the film's subject, filmmaker Mark Borchardt, celebrating an "atmospheric" November day. There's something in the atmosphere...